LAN in a Can

With multiple PCs in your home, you may want a central repository for music, photos, and even videos.

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Once you have two or more PCs in your small business or home officeand who doesn't? odds are you need a third PC. A file server. It's always been possible to take any old PC, slap in a network card, and call the machine a server. But now we're seeing a rebirth of tiny servers that don't take up much more space than Dan Brown novels.

I've used personal servers for several years, always aware that the cost per gigabyte was high relative to the cost of a cheap PC with a big hard drive. But the reasons for having a server are changing. You always need backup; writing files out to another hard drive is a lot simpler than hunting up a writable CD or DVD, feeding discs, and so on. With multiple PCs in a home setting, you may want a central repository for music, photos, and even videos. (You can compress 50 1-hour digital videos onto 25GB with darn good quality.) And once you install a digital media hub next to your PC and stereo system, you'll need a back-end server for the media you're sharing among your PCs.

Such devices are commonly called network-attached storage, although network hard drive is sometimes used for smaller and simpler (sub-$500) units. Server appliance is an old term. Informally, these devices could be called "shoebox servers" or even "LAN in a can."

I recently searched for upgrades to my two existing servers, an ancient but still serviceable Snap Server and a Linksys EFG80. I found over half a dozen reasonable choices, but among them, more are suited to small business than to small-office or home users.

Three that fare better when price is not your sole concern are from LaCie, Linksys, and Snap Appliance. They run $600 to $900 street for 120GB or 160GB models. The LaCie Ethernet Disk is a low-rise rack-mountable device with USB and FireWire connectors for adding even more storage. The Linksys model has a bay for a second drive and a printer port. Snap's looks like a sculpted brick.

The Mirra Personal Server ($499 direct for 120GB) shines for people paranoid about data loss. It automatically makes eight sets of backups and lets you access them from anywhere on the Web.

For those who want a really low price, the Ximeta NetDisk checks in at $240 street for 120GB. Iomega sells the similar Network Hard Drive. Each has a USB jack, in this case for direct connection to your PC as an external hard drive. When Ethernet-connected, they require a small applet running on your PC, which Ximeta says is an advantage, because your PC more easily treats the device as a local drive (even if it's parked down the hall in a closet). But that means one more piece of software your PC has to juggle. As USB-connected hard drives, these compete somewhat with the Maxtor OneTouch, a USB/FireWire external drive ($200 street for 120GB) with excellent backup software.

The D-Link DSM-604H has everything you could want in a personal server except for disk space. With its 2.5-inch notebook drive, it's so small and light you can hang it on the wall with a pair of screws, but you're limited to 40GB ($380 street)not enough for storing multimedia files. Too bad; setup took only 10 minutes.

The Buffalo LinkStation is the spoiler at $300 street for 120GB. It has decent backup software and two USB ports: one for adding an external drive, one for a printer. The only downside is that it can't be directly connected as an external hard drive the way the Ximeta and Iomega servers can. Also, there is no higher-capacity model; many of the others go to 250GB, which isn't a lot if you want to store DV tapes in native format.

My biggest disappointment in this search was from the digital-media-hub end. Almost every media hub shares the same shortcoming as the Ximeta and Iomega products: It requires client software on a PC. If the intermediary PC is offor if it crashesyou're out of luck. (The Turtle Beach AudioTron is the one exception; this music-only player can find any independently functioning network hard drive.) If your media hub needs to talk through a PC, why not just install a bigger hard drive and have it talk directly to the PC?

Call this a split decision: For backup and shared storage, these network hard drives are fine, as prices come down to not much more than the cost of the drive, case, and Ethernet connection. But as the back end to a media hub, the PC can't be eliminated from the equation. If it were my money, as of mid-2004, my choice for a media hub and personal server would be a Roku or Turtle Beach hub plus a Buffalo Technology drivetotal cost, $500 to $600.

Bill Howard is the editor of TechnoRide.com, the car site for tech fans, and writes a column on car technology for PC Magazine each issue. He is also a contributing editor of PC Magazine.
Bill's articles on PCs, notebooks, and printers have been cited five times in the annual Computer Press Association Awards. He was named as one of the industry's ten most influential journalists from 1997 to 2000 by Marketing Computers and is a frequent commentator on TV news and business shows as well...
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